Batteries in hybrid vehicles or electric vehicles are connected to motors (inverters) via a conductive line. Conductive line routing structures such as that of JP 2011-173456A are known. In the disclosed routing structure, a battery that is provided in the rear side of the vehicle is connected to an inverter provided inside the engine room via multiple electrical lines. A metallic shield pipe is arranged underneath the vehicle, and conductive lines are inserted into this shield pipe. The shield pipe is bent into a shape that follows a predetermined routing path, and the front end side is introduced into the engine room and extends to the vicinity of the inverter. The routing path between the shield pipe and inverter is relatively short, and because the task of connection becomes difficult if the shield pipe cannot be freely bent, a metallic braided portion that is made up of individual metal wires braided into a tubular shape is connected to the front end side of the shield pipe so that bending can be easily performed. Similarly, the conductive lines inside the metal braided portion are also required to follow the bending of the metal braided portion, and therefore it has been regular practice to use stranded electrical lines that have superior flexibility, for the conductive lines that connect the battery to the motor (inverter) for the entirety of the routing path.
Incidentally, the diameter of the shield pipe depends on the outer diameter of the conductive lines to be inserted into the shield pipe, but as it is difficult to achieve a smaller diameter with stranded electrical lines, the changing over to single-core lines, whose diameter is easily reduced, has recently been considered in the portion to be inserted into the shield pipe. However, free bending of the electrical lines is required in the portion outside of the shield pipe as described above, but this requirement cannot be easily met with a single-core line electrical line. For this reason, stranded electrical lines need to be used in the portion outside of the shield pipe. If that is the case, single-core line electrical lines will be connected to stranded electrical lines at the exit portion of the shield pipe. Also, a heat shrinking tube needs to be placed over the junction portion between two electrical lines in order to avoid short circuiting between the electrical lines.
JP 2011-173456A is an example of related art.